The OTIS Story

In 2017, Scout Music asked San Francisco’s RestlessDev to create a vastly better music catalog solution for its music licensing business. During the process, Scout founder Joey Prather and RestlessDev founder Mike Arace saw a big opportunity. After a deep dive into problems around sourcing, searching and securing music for licensing, they reimagined a complete licensing platform. OTIS was born.

For music buyers, OTIS increases visibility and trust through the entire request, search and license process.

For music suppliers, OTIS solves music search, retagging, and creates a record of pitches and real-time track availability.

OTIS takes music licensing from clunky to streamlined; from scattered to simple; from old to new.

The Team

Product / Growth

Prather founded Scout Music in 2005. Since then, Scout has provided music licensing, production and supervision services for clients such as Levi’s, BMW, Old Spice, McDonald’s, Target, Renault, CBS, ABC, Showtime, Sony and Warner Bros.

A series of happy accidents led to the founding of Dyme.co in 2015, resulting in an unexpected 2 year journey deep into the world of finance and new technology. Landing a strategic investment from Prudential and Best in Show at Finovate NYC, Dyme was featured in the New York Times, Clear Channel and financial industry outlets.

In 2017, using perspectives and efficiencies gained from his initial run in the tech world, Prather combined his deep experience in music for media to build OTIS, a music licensing platform for the demands of today’s licensing professional.

Technology

Mike started RestlessDev in 2009, originally as a social app company building social experiences on Facebook. Over time the company evolved to be a trusted tech partner to clients in the advertising, venture capital, and startup industries. He’s not big on name dropping, though.

He was drawn to start OTIS by a life-long love of music and a desire to provide tools that can help working musicians succeed in the industry.